HMRC to Employ Debt Collectors to Recover Tax

The British Government announced it plans to use the services of debt collectors' agencies to recover unpaid tax in an effort to receive £7 billion more in tax by the year of 2015.

HM Revenue & Customs promises that debt collectors will be nice on debtors helping them spread payments to pay off debt. The need for third-party services has been explained by the body: it claims debt collectors are better equipped to recover debt than HMRC is.

Most likely, debt collectors will chase self-assessment taxpayers, who constitute 9 million of UK citizens. As such, HM Revenue & Customs claims that the new measures will be mainly aimed at people who avoid payingtaxes rather than at wealthy Brits who search for loopholes in tax legislation.

The 3 major objectives HM Revenue & Customs and debt collectors plan to meet are:

• preventing UK taxpayers from transferring money overseas in an effort to avoid tax
• monitoring suspicious businesses failing to declare tax
• stopping individuals and businesses from paying tax that are not due